Imagine for a moment that slavery were still legal globally, and it was recognised that it was immoral and should be abolished. This is how the modern world might deal with it.
- The United Nations, after a decade of meetings would publish a thirty-page resolution, declaring it a moral imperative to end slavery by 2040, and would establish a new agency to oversee the abolition process, to set targets, and to publish key indicators measuring progress towards the abolition of slavery. At least 1000 non slave jobs would be created in this agency.
- The European Union would commit to ending slavery by 2035, ahead of schedule, but it would take another five years for all the member countries to agree, and meanwhile they would slip behind the schedule.
- Slave owners and slave traders would spend billions of dollars lobbying against abolition and paying scientists and economists to “prove” that slavery is essential for the global economy, and that in general “slaves enjoy excellent health” and seeking to negotiate a code of conduct for the humanitarian treatment of slaves rather than freeing them.
- Once they saw the writing was clearly on the wall a whole industry would develop around “market solutions towards the abolition of slavery.”
- Slave offsets Major slave owning companies would be able to delay releasing slaves by paying a tiny share of their profits to “reward” smaller slave owning companies for releasing slaves faster. This would spawn a secondary market in tradeable offsets. This in turn would create a new consulting field in monitoring compliance and helping the small slavers to claim their offsets.
- Investing in mitigation would become a big thing. Philanthropists and aid agencies would develop grant and patient capital funds to “mitigate the effects of slavery in those geographies most affected by the capture of slaves”.
- Those with the biggest financial interest in slavery would create venture capital funds to “invest in the post slave economy”. This would allow them to control the way labour is used and remunerated in the future. (Much as the USA went seamlessly from slavery to the use of unpaid prison labour)
- Some large slave-dependent companies would form a voluntary organisation called “Towards abolition of non-consensual labour 2040” complete with codes of conduct and a commitment to a phased abolition of the practice and much self-serving rhetoric around the need to achieve a “zero slave economy as quickly and responsibly as possible, while ensuring the effective functioning of global markets.” They will argue that government intervention is undesirable, and the private sector should be left to do what it does best: use market mechanisms to solve humanity’s greatest problems.
- Some of the most progressive agencies lobbying for and monitoring abolition would make a strong case for “consulting the slaves and the communities they come from” as frequently as possible to ensure that they are “in charge” of the process.
- Every five years large meetings would be convened by the UN Agency to monitor progress and tell us that we have fallen behind and urgent steps must be taken to hasten the freeing of slaves.
- Agencies with an interest in the abolition process would tell us that we need to mobilise trillions of dollars each year to be able to transition to a slave free society. Most of the money so raised would be either spent in the slave owning part of the world or would be directed to the sons and daughters of slave owners, who were doing “good work” in the communities most affected by slavery.
- No-one with power would listen to those who say: “END SLAVERY NOW NO MATTER THE COST.”